About This Site

About the Featured Teachers

Jeff Arzberger

Music Teacher
Forest Hills High School
Queens, New York City

Jeff Arzberger has been teaching for four years and has experience in several areas of the music profession. He plays alto saxophone, piano, bass guitar, and percussion, and he is also a composer, an arranger, and a frequent music director for musicals in regional theaters, community theaters, and high schools. Jeff attended Queens College, where he received a bachelor of arts and a master of science in education.

Steve Becton

Program Associate
Facing History and Ourselves
Memphis, Tennessee

Steve Becton has been working in the Memphis regional office of Facing History and Ourselves since 2001. He provides training for teachers who want to become familiar with Facing History methods. The focus of his work is urban schools. Before joining Facing History, Steve was a high school social studies teacher in Memphis. In addition to teaching courses in economics, United States government, and modern history, he coached football and track. Prior to teaching, Steve was district executive of the Chickasaw Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

Steve’s passion for improving race relations began while attending Rhodes College in Memphis, where he was one of only eight African American males in his class. At Rhodes he received his bachelor of arts in business administration and a specialist degree in secondary education. He also holds a master’s degree in educational leadership from the University of Memphis.

Rabbi Meir Feldman

Associate Rabbi
Temple Israel
Memphis, Tennessee

Meir Feldman has been an Associate Rabbi at Temple Israel since 2003. Prior to that he was a rabbi at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City. He was ordained at Hebrew Union College in New York City.

Prior to his life as a rabbi, Meir was an attorney for eight years, first with a large New York law firm and then as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. He graduated from Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, in New York City, and studied political science at Brandeis University.

Martina Grant

History Teacher
Forest Hills High School
Queens, New York City

Martina Grant has been teaching for six years, all of them at Forest Hills High School. Her courses include government, economics, global history, and Facing History, which she introduced to the school. She teaches in the school’s Public Service Academy and is the Assistant Coordinator of the Welcome Academy, which addresses the needs of a large immigrant population.

Martina graduated from Queens College with a bachelor of arts in history, and a minor in secondary education. She also received a master of science in education from Queens College, where she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in administration. At Queens College, Martina is participating in an ongoing project to design curriculum that looks at the Palestinian-Israeli crisis from multiple perspectives. She is committed to teaching her students the importance of tolerance, understanding, and equality.

Sheila Huntley

Sheila Huntley has taught elementary school for 18 years. When she was an elementary school student herself, she became fascinated by the idea that the world could have allowed something like the Holocaust to occur. She saw connections to the history of the United States, beginning with Native Americans and slavery, continuing through the civil rights movement, and now involving issues of religious rights and the rights of homosexuals. She has always spent time teaching her students about tolerance and diversity by using the history of the Holocaust, slavery, and subjugation.

Sheila has attended basic and advanced Facing History and Ourselves workshops. There she discovered The Children of Willesden Lane, which she immediately brought into her classroom. Sheila has a bachelor of science in education from Memphis State University, with an emphasis on teaching grades 1–8, and a master of science in curriculum and instruction from the University of Memphis.

Chris Mazzino

English Teacher
West Scranton High School
Scranton, Pennsylvania

Chris Mazzino has been teaching for 13 years at the middle and high school levels. He was a 2003 recipient of the Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award. Chris was instrumental in organizing a city‑wide read of The Children of Willesden Lane, which included members of the community as well as all students in grades 7–12.

Chris is the Chairman of his school’s English Department and has presented twice at the convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, on the topics of classroom publishing and graduate fellowships. He has attended several Pennsylvania Department of Education Governor’s Institutes regarding the teaching of writing and research, and he has helped his creative writing students publish two books of their poetry and prose. Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in English and humanities from The Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree in education from Wilkes University. He also holds a degree in mortuary science from Northampton Community College and is a licensed funeral director.

Nancy Parrish

History Teacher
Ridgeway Middle School
Memphis, Tennessee

Nancy Parrish teaches eighth-grade American History and a Facing History and Ourselves elective course. She is also History Department Chair and eighth-grade Team Leader at her school. Over her 30 year career, she has taught in five states and at every grade level. After moving to Memphis in 1996, she began working at an inner‑city school where she became involved with Facing History and Ourselves. She found the Facing History curriculum very helpful in addressing many of the problems that her students and school were grappling with. Since then, she has developed Facing History and Ourselves classes in two other schools.

Nancy has presented at Facing History and Ourselves workshops, and recently co‑authored activities for I Promised I Would Tell, a book by Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz. The book and activities appeared in the Memphis newspaper The Commercial Appeal over a six-week period.

Nancy earned a bachelor’s degree from University of the Ozarks and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. She received National Board Certification in 2004 and serves as a Tennessee State National Board mentor. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in history at the University of Memphis.

Jane Percival

Jane Percival, Ed.D., has taught for more than 35 years in a variety of settings that include public schools (grades 3–12), private residential schools (grades 6–12), and the University of New Hampshire at Keene, where she was an Assistant Professor in the Education Department. During her teaching career, she has chosen to work primarily with middle school students, in the curricular area of language arts. Their boundless energy, enthusiasm, and insights are just a few of the reasons that she has enjoyed traveling with them into and through the worlds that authors have created across the decades.